Page:Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs (Volume One).djvu/106

Rh the deliberations of an assembly charged with a share in the government of a state. Hinckley was an original thinker, with a hobby. His purpose was to secure the abolition of the rule which excluded from the witness-stand those who did not believe in a personal God. This he accomplished, and by the aid of the arguments that are formulated in Stuart Mill’s Treatise on Liberty, but they are not there more clearly presented by Mill than they had been presented by Hinckley in the debates of 1842 and 1843 in the Massachusetts House of Representatives. Hinckley was a bore, but the object was accomplished through his agency. Since that time such parties have been permitted to testify, and the day should come speedily when the laws should be so changed as to allow the husband and the wife to testify in all cases where they happen to be jointly interested or opposed to each other.

In judicial investigations, all who know anything should be permitted to speak, and of their credibility the court and the jury should judge. No one should be kept from the witness-stand upon the ground of interest or feeling. Interest in a party or a cause may be a temptation to perjury. In a majority of contests, however, the truth will be told voluntarily even by interested or infamous persons, and in cases where the witness indulges in falsehood the skill of attorneys and the judgment of the court will enable the jury to reach a correct conclusion.

Frothingham was a student, a fair speaker, but destitute of the qualities of an orator and too timid for leadership. A parliamentary leader may, or may not, be a leader of opinion. Mr. Clay was both. Mr. Webster was a leader in opinion, and whatever leadership was accorded to him in the Senate of the United States was due to the recognized fact that he represented a constituency of opinion larger than his constituency as a senator. In the case of Mr. Sumner that was more conspicuously true. As a mere parliamentary leader, his